America’s Most Famous Poets: The Lives and Careers of Poe, Whitman, Dickinson, and Frost

Edgar Allan Poe was one of America’s first native-born professional authors, but he nevertheless embodied the now-common archetype of the artist — dark, tortured, brilliant and tragic. Born into troubled conditions, Poe’s life hardly improved over the years, and when it did, his happiness or triumph was always brief. His work was lauded during his lifetime, but his lifestyle never came close to matching the legacy that would swell in the decades following his death.

Walt Whitman, the great American poet, is also in many ways a great American enigma, for more and less are known about him than other famous men in 19th century American history. On the one hand, he was the product of something of an all-American family, the sort of salt of the earth people he would later describe so vividly in his work. On the other, he was a complete bohemian and profligate, given to vanity in the way he dressed and lived. His seminal work, Leaves of Grass, began as little more than a pamphlet but grew for decades, as each new edition added more poems.

Like many writers of her day, Emily Dickinson was a virtual unknown during her lifetime. After her death, however, when people discovered the incredible amount of poetry that she had written, Dickinson became celebrated as one of America’s greatest poets. Dickinson was notoriously introverted and mostly lived as a recluse, carrying out her friendships almost entirely by written letters.

Frost may not be as remembered or influential as other American literary giants, or even poets such as Emily Dickinson and Walt Whitman, but his career was historic in terms of its length and breadth of accomplishments. Over the course of several decades, Frost became the first to win four Pulitzer Prizes for Poetry, and he also earned such recognitions as a Congressional Medal of Honor before being made the poet laureate of Vermont shortly before the end of his life.

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